Beginner's Dari: Persian (Hippocrene Beginner's)

Rating:
Summary: It should never have left the publisher
Review: At the moment, there is a real shortage of Dari courses in English. This is the only Dari course on the market and it's a complete failure.

Dari has eight vowels. In the introduction, the author describes the six vowels she is going to use. When you start the book, you'll find that she uses no less than eleven vowels, in a very random way. To take but two examples. The long i-sound of English "been" or "leaf" is not mentioned at all in the introduction. In the course, this sounds is sometimes spelled as -`i- and sometimes as -ee-. There is no difference between these, in some lessons the author uses one, in another she uses another. The beginner who does not know Dari will probably assume that there is a difference between -`i- and -ee-, though in fact there is none. The same goes for another sounds, sometimes spelled -`u- and sometimes -oo-.

There exist a more or less agreed upon system of transcribing Persian words into the Latin alphabet (Dari is a form of Persian) which has been used both in older Dari courses and in courses on other forms of Perisan. For a beginner, it would have been easiest if the author had chosen this transcription model, since it is very simple, logic and completely accurate. The fact that another transcription was employed would not be much of a problem if it was only explained and if it was consistent throughout the course instead of changing from one lesson to the next.

The transcriptions are the main problem, if they were in order I would have given the book three stars. The lessons are easy to follow, although not very far-reaching. The course is far behind such courses excellent Persian courses as Thackston's Introduction to Persian and Baizoyev's A Beginner's Guide to Tajiki. It's also far from Colloquial Persian, but could be a good, short introduction if only the transcriptions would make sense.

Finally, there is one group of people who will find this course useful. Those who already speak another form of Persian, such as Farsi or Tajiki, and want to learn the basics of Dari will not have much of a problem. But for them better books already exist in Persian. Those of us who speak English will have to wait for a revised edition or another Dari course.